Chris Murphy.
There’s a glimmer of hope that the tiniest shred of gun control legislation might pass the Senate in response to the Orlando shooting that left 49 people dead.
After nearly 15 hours of talking on the Senate floor, the filibuster held by Democrats on Wednesday and into the early hours of Thursday has apparently been a success, and there will be two votes on gun control measures.
The two ideas — stopping people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns, and requiring background checks even when someone purchases a gun online or at a gun show instead of in a store — will be allowed votes by the full Senate, Democrats say.
“We chose to ask for the two least controversial provisions possible that will still do a world of good,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, home to the Newtown mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults. He spoke from the Senate floor and announced Republicans had agreed “on a path to get those votes.”
With the Senate controlled by Republicans, it’s essentially up to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on whether any piece of legislation gets a vote. So Democrats, led by Murphy, filibustered an existing funding bill, called the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. It worked, and now they must focus on winning enough votes to pass the laws.
“Least controversial provisions”. I can’t get past that, nor can I muster up even a tiny bit of hope. Yes, this might help, a teeny, tiny bit, if these actually make it through, but I am so fucking sick and tired of every single sensible person in uStates feeling the need to walk on tiptoes on eggshells, so as not to upset all the gun fetishists. FFS, wouldn’t this normally be called terrorism, where people are scared to death of those with weapons? A good portion of uStates is being held hostage, and nothing is going to be done, unless it’s a tiny, marginally effective sop.
My only issue, and I can’t believe I’m with the Republicans on this, is that they want to tie it in to the horribly unjust and anti-civil liberty no fly list.
I think the whole no fly list is idiotic anyway. It’s being used because it’s one of the only ways to try and slip any control legislation by.
It still makes no sense to me that a person does not have to prove any type of knowledge or proficiency with guns prior to buying or “operating” one. FFS, less than a hundred years ago, anyone could drive a car without any type of license, but the sensible solution when they became more common was to register cars and require insurance and licenses to operate them. There are no mass protests about people’s “right to drive” being infringed. I know driving is not mentioned in the Constitution, but would it be so bad to make sure that guns were regulated (OH NO!) like motor vehicles?
No mass protests, but there is an anti-driving license crowd out there (libertarians, of course).
I thought the anti–driving license kooks were mostly “sovereign citizen” wackos, albeit that, I’m guessing, has a large overlap with liberkleptoism.
I’ve heard that any bill which prohibits people on the no-fly list from buying guns would include amendments to significantly improve it from a due process perspective, since a significant faction of Democrats have favored that for a while and GOPers will want to change it now that the only right they care about will be impacted. Assuming this is true, that bill would be a double win.
blf -- It doesn’t seem to be libertarian orthodoxy, but there definitely some who are against them (if you haven’t seen this yet -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Psp0A-zJgU -- well, you should).
Now taking a stand against drunk driving laws on the other hand, that seems to be libertarian orthodoxy.
As I predicted there is very little chance of anything happening despite the “agreement” / fillibuster, Gun control vote in Senate unlikely to produce Republican compromise:
My added boldfacing.
As an aside, note the vote will be on using the FBI’s “watch list”, not the “no fly” list. According to the article, the watch list is broader than the no fly list. I have no idea to what extent the watch list conflicts with civil liberties (as noted by others, the no fly list has a bad problem here!).